What does 'the future' mean to you, regardless of age?

Shawn

This is a rambling three part topic about a general question to the reader and a meta-question about philosophers idea about the future, and finally for the wiser readers whether if you have been surprised or disappointed in your vision about the future?

It seems that every person wonders about the future. I mean how couldn't they? That's the only thing worth striving for and adapting towards-the future, that is. What it holds for us and our place in it. What new technology will bring about new change, increases in productivity, bountifulness, discoveries in medicine, physics, and such.

Personally, as a believer in technology and progress I am anticipating a future that most tech giants are pointing towards, more or less. One where machines have become more efficient than humans in resource allocation, meaning that for the most part every task done on the market will be done more efficiently and effectively than humans could do in comparison with artificial intelligence. How far am I projecting into the future to this situation. I don't know; but, at least within my lifetime.

Now, I wonder what some of the wiser fellow's that grace this forum have to say about 'the Future'? How many of you knew in your hearts that the Soviet Union would collapse within your lifetimes? Just a general question. What about the climate, oil, and over-population? Where these (now current) issues prominent in your mind when forming your expectations about the future? I'm wondering if my rosy tinted glasses are realistic or not?

Finally, why don't philosophers talk about the future or have I simply not been exposed to less mainstream figures (apart from Marx). Hegel seems to be the only prominent philosopher that utilizes the man made concept about 'the future' in his work, with great finesse. This is starting to be a topic worthy of another topic; but, I'd like to pin it down before it flies out of my head. Namely, that only philosophers worth reading incorporate 'the future' into their work. Otherwise, it ends up as idealistic and far distant as say Plato's Republic.

Thoughts?

Terrapin Station

What does "the future" mean to me? Any time after the present.

Cavacava

↪Terrapin Station

Isn't ..."Any time after the present", the past"?

Terrapin Station

↪Cavacava

?? The past is before the present, not after.

Cavacava

↪Terrapin Station

Sure the past occurred before present chronologically but my point of view is in the present, in the flow of time, and from that POV what has occurred I call the past, what is yet to occur I call the future.

Terrapin Station

from that POV what has occurred I call the past, what is yet to occur I call the future. — Cavacava

Right. What has occurred is what occurred before what's occurring now. What is yet to occur is what will occur after what is occurring now. So after the present isn't the past, it's the future.

Cavacava

↪Terrapin Station

Fine, but do you agree that what is chronological, depends on, is derivative from, our POV in the flow of time?

Srap Tasmaner

↪Question

Though the details have changed, concern about the effect of modern civilization on our world has been around a while. When I was kid, the concern was pollution. (I looked it up--the "crying Indian" PSA was 1971.)

So there's continuity there, but also difference. There was this sense 40 years ago that we could (a) stop messing up the planet, and (b) clean it up. Now we know that (a) is a lot harder because it's not littering or the occasional bad actor illegally dumping toxic waste that's the problem, it's the fundamental driver of modern civilization, i.e., burning fossil fuels. And it turns out (b) might not be an option, if we can cause permanent, irreversible damage.

So in a way an environmental activist from 40 years ago could say now "I told you so," but in another way they were probably wrong at the time about the two most important points. Talking about the future is almost always like that--even when you're right, you're wrong.

Terrapin Station

↪Cavacava

It's relative (indexical) to a given reference point, yes.

0 thru 9

Sure the past occurred before present chronologically but my point of view is in the present, in the flow of time, and from that POV what has occurred I call the past, what is yet to occur I call the future. — Cavacava

:D Think i might know what you are getting at here, having had a similar thought before. That time can be thought to flow in two ways. First, is a linear, progressive type. Imagine Past, Present, and Future in a consecutive row. This could be visualized as the years 1920, 2017, 2100, for example. The direction of the flow of time is from left to right. It was the year 1920, 1921... to the present 2017... eventually reaching 2100, assuming humans don't completely screw up the planet. Unless there is a clever dolphin around to read a Timex watch that is still ticking despite everything being flooded.

The second way to view time is a "energy flow" type way, going right to left. Time "flows" from the future to the present to the past, if viewed in a certain way. For example, when you are in a car, and see a billboard in the distance which could represent the future. It is heading towards you, or so it appears because you are heading towards it. When the billboard is next to you, it is in your presence or "present". And when you have sped past it, and can only see it in your rear view mirror, it is in your "past" so to speak.

Either way, time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin', into the future. Where does the time go? Maybe it just goes back to wherever it came from. What this has to do with the OP, i am not sure. Just a minor tangent. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

BC

↪Cavacava

""The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner

Shawn

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but, is it possible for the future to have a meaning regardless of (time) age?

Cavacava

↪Bitter Crank

The Sound and the Fury

When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again,hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

Srap Tasmaner

↪Bitter Crank

One of Faulkner's hobbies was lying about his past, as I recall.

mcdoodle

↪Question

Your question sent me to T S Eliot's 'Burnt Norton' rather than a philosopher.

The whole poem.

Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? — Eliot

Shawn

Hmm. Maybe the question was ill framed or deserves a clear and concise 'another topic.

Cavacava

↪0 thru 9

I like the Blue Oyster Cult. Time is one of the ways we intuit what we experience, and at that level, it, is the ego's point of view that counts, without an ego there is no disco. They do seem to interpenetrate each other, so yea they slip through each other, but time as intuition goes nowhere.

BC

Thoughts? — Question

At 70, my future is a lot shorter than my past. I'm fine with that. Ten more years would be about right--twenty, too long. But I could be dead this afternoon. There aren't any big exciting events on my schedule, so that would be alright too.

Our collective future is more interesting and most likely at least somewhat dystopian. Dystopian rather than utopian, because our species does not have good skills at foresight. I do not see a techno-utopia in our future, but certainly more machines and AI. Some people expect life-altering, paradigm-redefining technology. I do not, because I expect that little new technology will be developed first and foremost for the benefit of humankind as a whole. IF retinal replacements, enhanced memory and thinking implants, or body replacements made to order turn out to be practical, they will be standard fare for only a small elite.

We won't be leaving our terrestrial ball for distant celestial orbits, and for the same reason that I don't expect life-altering, paradigm-redefining technology to remake this world. We have discovered the basic principles of matter; that revolution can not be repeated. Human travel to the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) isn't inconceivable, but offers no escape from our difficulties here. Biological science has plenty of room for development, but the hazards researchers will risk will create more, and perhaps insoluble new problems. Our deficient foresight comes into critical play here.

Our best bet is orderly devolution to a smaller population, sustainable lifestyles, and no innovation beyond our capacity to manage risks. Fat chance, right?

Cavacava

↪Question

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but, is it possible for the future to have a meaning regardless of (time) age?

Not sure. Do you mean that most people have a bias towards the future, which fits in well with our culture's sense of progress? But, not everyone.

BC

↪Srap Tasmaner

I don't know much about Faulkner, but can any of us be certain we are telling only the truth about our individual pasts? Maybe it is necessary to lie about our pasts? Maybe the truth about our pasts is impossible?

0 thru 9

As for a possible meaning of the future... it seems so mercurial and unformed, like wet cement. I'm still trying to understand my own past, let alone a collective future. Not that it is a fruitless exercise. Though the fruit one finds would be unripened. If one were able to peer above the walls of duality, then past/present/future might not seem so separate.

The conclusion of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael offers a possible hopeful future in which humans allow evolution to continue. But only if "civilized" humans cease their complete conquest of the world, turning everything into human consumables. Wiping out anything and anyone that gets in the way of total domination, and fueling both unlimited population growth and pollution, which is contrary to the Earth's ability to handle. But Quinn says it more elegantly than i could, peering into the prehistoric past as well as our possible future. The future is a seedling or a sprout, which could either be trampled or tended.

Srap Tasmaner

↪Bitter Crank

Yeah but then there's lying. I think there were claims about military service that were demonstrably false. He may have done it just to mess with people he didn't respect, I don't remember.

BC

The past is never past.

We have a lot of technology on hand already. Here's a picture of the Erie Canal, which it turns out, is coming in handy for moving cargo that is too long, too large, and too heavy to move on railroad or truck. The cargo are tanks (12 in all) for the Genesee Brewery in Rochester, New York.

Twelve enormous beer tanks, headed to the Genesee Beer Company in Rochester, are among the oversize cargo populating the Erie Canal. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

mcdoodle

Hegel seems to be the only prominent philosopher that utilizes the man made concept about 'the future' in his work, with great finesse. — Question

Well, the German tradition carries on, and those who do and don't descend from Hegel are also fascinated by our attitude towards the future.

Heidegger had an anti-technology view that you would perhaps dislike, but he saw our, Dasein's attitude toward the future as central. It is both to face one's own death, the death of all one's comrades, and yet to plunge into the consequences of what we are doing. There's a difference then between merely 'expecting' and resolutely 'anticipating'. To anticipate, or 'run ahead' - translation is a tricky thing here - is to encounter the possibility of the authentic life. Here's where Heidegger leads to Sartre, at least in my head: to act towards and into the future is to choose, and one can quiescently opt into the learned pattern of things, or choose the authentic, with all its angst and facing up to stuff.

I quoted Eliot because I think he has an interesting, if eventually a rather mystical and conservative, view towards the future. Living itself is living-towards, every moment is poised on the edge of a future. Apo's naturalistic philosophy and my own would for instance agree on that, and I think it's philosophically interesting to reflect on that area.

But to speculate about humans' future relation to technology is for me just a popular sport, without clear meaning: I don't know what criteria makes one person's opinion more pertinent than another, as forecasts are usually crap. I gather Harari has written a futuristic how-we-will-be-cyborgs book, forgotten its title; I liked his 'Sapiens' as an opinionated piece of populism, maybe he has something useful to say?

Sivad

Our best bet is orderly devolution to a smaller population, sustainable lifestyles, and no innovation beyond our capacity to manage risks. — Bitter Crank

That would just be riding out the clock and would pretty much guarantee our extinction. The earth is ultimately a deathtrap and the longer we remain earthbound the more we run the risk of being wiped out by any of the many natural cataclysms that are certain to occur within the next millennia or so. Fortune favors the bold, better to shoot for the stars than be sitting ducks.

BC

The earth is ultimately a deathtrap and the longer we remain earthbound the more we run the risk of being wiped out by any of the many natural cataclysms that are certain to occur within the next millennia or so. Fortune favors the bold, better to shoot for the stars than be sitting ducks. — Sivad

For soft, juicy thin-skinned endo-skeletoned beasts like ourselves, I imagine the whole universe is pretty much a death trap.

True, there are various cataclysms stalking us, some of our own making. And riding our fleets of interstellar ships to comfy planets that we don't know about will involve risks of other cataclysms and catastrophes.

Fortune is a tricky bitch -- don't trust her.

Sivad

↪Bitter Crank

There are risks in colonizing space but it's much riskier to keep all our eggs in one basket. In order to ensure our long term survival we have to spread out and diversify.

BC

↪Sivad

Sivad, what is your plan for colonizing space? When? Where? How?

Sivad

↪Bitter Crank

Are you implying it's not feasible or something? What's your point?

TimeLine

I'm still trying to understand my own past, let alone a collective future. Not that it is a fruitless exercise. — 0 thru 9

Well, this is it, isn't it? Is there an arrow of time without memories of the past, a past that appears fixed and a future that also appears fixed considering that in the physical world, everything that is finite or dies requires an arrow of time. It all becomes futile, however the paradox here and in relation to Ishmael is that once we begin living in the present alone, your identity becomes absorbed into Nature and where the future interlinks with the past; the "future" like children are as much a part of you as is the well-being of the environment and the natural system as a whole. The only thing left is the joy of living a moral life.

The reasoning by your attempt to understand your past - which is absolutely imperative - is to attain the insight that is necessary to let it go and begin reasoning with a present-autonomy.

Terrapin Station

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but, is it possible for the future to have a meaning regardless of (time) age? — Question

I'm not completely sure what you're asking, but what it is for something to have a meaning is for an individual to make particular sorts of mental associations a la the thing in question triggering the associations in a translational though possibly abbreviated or symbolic manner.

What does 'the future' mean to you, regardless of age?

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